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Google says that a healthy, active online community is one of the signals they look for to determine your blog’s quality. Comments are considered part of your content, so the better they are, the better your blog does in search results.

The problem is, of course, that a lot of comments are either spam or they don’t add anything to the conversation. For example, “Great post!” and “Love it!” might feed your ego, but that’s about it.

So how do you encourage people to leave thoughtful, well-written comments that add to the conversation?

By using a seed question.

Once you upload your post, be the first one to comment on your own post. For example, let’s say you wrote a blog post titled 7 Ways to Get Free Traffic.

Your comment might be, “Thanks for checking out my post. I thought I’d kick off discussion with a few questions about how you get free traffic. What’s your favorite technique? How much time and resources does it take? And how effective has it been so far? I would love to hear from you on this.”

When you do this, you’ll likely find that more of the comments you receive actually ADD to the conversation.

One more thing, and this is a little sneaky – up-vote your own comment to keep it at the top. Odds are others will begin up-voting it as well, but it doesn’t hurt to add your own up-votes. You want your comment to be the first one people read.

Try this technique out on the next blog post you write, and I bet you’ll significantly increase the quality and quantity of comments you receive.

Not only can this help you with the development of your own community and search engine rankings, you’ll also likely find the seeds of inspiration for future blog posts as you interact with your blog readers in this way.

Rosa Parks was a woman, a relatively ordinary black passenger on a bus going into town one day in 1955. At this time, black people had to give up their seats on public transport for the white passenger; a rule that most followed to keep the peace. But not Rosa.

One day, she had had enough. Her mission was to encourage the civil rights of black people in her community and she felt that this rule was both unfair and demeaning to her cause. So when the bus driver got angry and told her to give up her seat for a white person, as was normal – she did something unheard of. She said no.

This small message to the people around her was the sparking of the Civil Rights Movement and was a key action in the future equality that stemmed from this fight.

Sometimes, in life, you have to be congruent with what you want others to see and experience. Sometimes your business name is not nearly as important as what you stand for. In fact, a well – written or explained mission statement can be the most vital part of your marketing strategy and it can change customer loyalty.

For example, the first store branded as “Trader Joe’s” opened in 1967. This Californian store, despite having a very unexciting name quintupled the number of its stores between 1990 and 2001, and multiplied its profits by ten. Trader Joe’s sales for 2009 was estimated at $8 billion.

In 2010, Fortune magazine estimated Trader Joe’s sales per square foot of floor space to be $1,750 — more than double that generated byWhole Foods Market even though technically they were much bigger with more advertising coverage. Why? Because they had a very clever mission statement that customers believed in and backed. Their statement was this:

“The mission of Trader Joe’s is to give our customers the best food and beverage values that they can find anywhere and to provide them with the information required to make informed buying decisions. We provide these with a dedication to the highest quality of customer satisfaction delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, fun, individual pride, and company spirit.”

This statement puts the customer and the customer experience central to the reason that they do business and their customer service policies back that up.

If you wish to succeed online in the same way, you must ensure that no matter how small you are or what product/service you may be selling – that you include a mission statement. One that shows the potential clients what you stand for, what you wish to achieve for them and how you plan to do so. This makes you believable, it gives you value and shows that you have ethics.

Not every online business has a mission statement. They think they don’t need one. They focus all their energy on branding, naming and selling their products and forget that being personal and driven in a very transparent way can absolutely double or triple your profits.

If you are one of these brands that have not yet developed a mission statement – I suggest you get working on one. It is also good to help you understand where you are at and where you want to go. Research some of the most effective mission statements and see what the biggest companies are portraying on their websites and through their ad campaigns to generate inspiration for your own mission.

People like to buy from genuine businesses who know and are congruent with what they are doing. It makes you unique to your message and shows people that you are not all about making money – you have some aims and objectives too that are very important and should be known.

If one black woman on a bus can spark an entire change in the world, who’s to say that your well designed mission statement won’t change the face of how you do business and how important you become to the customer?

Yes, you can work like a horse, make all kinds of big plans, stay up late and get up early. But if your head isn’t in the right place, you’ll never get ahead. It’s really that simple.

A second job? Forget about it. Unless that second job is digging gold bricks out of the ground, you’ll never get ahead. Lack of sleep, lack of a life, an abundance of stress, poor eating – the last thing you need is a second job.

And you know it. It’s why you’ve got your own online business or you’re starting one. So is mindset even important? Shouldn’t you be concentrating exclusively on the mechanics of your business?

The fact is this: Without the proper mindset, the mechanics really won’t amount to much. If you don’t believe you can do something then the odds of you actually accomplishing it are slim. And if you do momentarily succeed, your own self-sabotage will reverse that victory in a hurry.

Here then are 5 money mindset hacks you MUST have to permanently increase your income in a dramatic, gratifying fashion:

Believe in yourself and your abilities.

To say this is key is an understatement. If you don’t believe in yourself, you will actively find ways to fail, whether you realize you’re doing it or not.

We all deal with being vulnerable, feeling uncertain and fearing failure. But you’ve got to trust that by moving forward despite these feelings, you’ll figure it out. It’s a matter of stacking small victories one on top of the other. Each victory should give you some small boost in confidence that you can use to earn the next victory, and so forth.

This is why having a big hairy goal often doesn’t work – you don’t believe you can accomplish it because you’ve never done anything like it before. But if you break that big hairy goal down into tiny simple goals, and then accomplish them one by one, soon you will believe that yes, you truly can do anything you set your mind to.

Lose your money blocks.

If you’re perpetually short of money, you’ve likely been programmed to have a negative relationship with it. During your childhood you heard things like, “Rich people are crooks,” and “Money is the root of all evil.”

Two things you can do to lose your money blocks are…

Reprogram yourself. The subconscious believes whatever it hears over and over again. To reprogram your subconscious takes work, but it’s worth it. When you think, “I have to work hard to make money,” correct yourself with a statement such as, “It is so easy and fun to earn money.” Choose 2 or 3 positive affirmations and turn them into mantras that you say to yourself throughout your day and as you fall asleep.

Find friends who are good at making money. Connect with others who are on the same entrepreneurial path you’re on. Talking to, relating to and being around people who easily make money will help you to see it’s alright for you to make money as well.

Declutter your life.

This one is simple – if you have a lot of useless stuff lying around your office, your home and your car, you don’t have room for the abundance you’re seeking. You don’t have room to grow. Money loves speed, clarity and clear space. It hates clutter. Get rid of everything in your life that serves no purpose and organize the rest.

Be ever so grateful.

Let go of resentments. Forgive positively everybody of everything, with no exceptions. Holding resentments only hurts yourself – it doesn’t hurt the person you refuse to forgive. And be grateful for everything you have in your life, as well as those things about to come into your life.

Forgive yourself for your financial past.

The person you most need to forgive is yourself. And you might have to do it over and over again. Forgiveness is a funny thing – today you forgive yourself, tomorrow you’re berating yourself again for the less-than-wise decisions you made.

Any time you find yourself beating yourself up, forgive yourself. You did the best you could at the time. Remind yourself that the past can never be undone, and you can’t live there, either. But you do have today, so make it count.

Now, most readers will nod their heads at what they just read and forget about it. But a few – perhaps you – will take this advice to heart and begin making the changes necessary to realize your financial goals.

For you, this could be the start of a whole new financial life – one of abundance.

Two words: Recurring Payments

If you’re like many online marketers, you might think the key to success is having a huge list of subscribers and tons of customers. And of course, both of these things are good…

But if each customer only buys from you one time, then much of your time, energy and resources will be spent on forever finding and selling new customers.

If, however, you can increase how often each customer buys from you, then you can make more sales while doing far less prospecting.

For example, imagine if each customer buys from you 6 or 8 times instead of once. And imagine if you only have to sell them once for this to happen…

… you can begin to see the power of subscription payments.

And it gets even better…

– Because your average customer value is higher, you can actually afford to ‘buy’ new customers through targeted and tested ad campaigns. This literally takes the ceiling off of your income.

– People who buy from you on a subscription basis are much more likely to buy other products from you as well.

– You can spend far less time hunting for new customers, and more time cultivating the customers you already have.

– You continue to get paid until the customer does something to stop these payments. It takes effort on their part to overcome their own inertia and figure out how to unsubscribe. Often it’s easier for them to put it off, sometimes for months and even years.

– If the service or product you’re selling brings a tremendous amount of value, they’re not going to want to cancel. Ever.

– You have an excellent idea from month to month of what your income will be. You’ve got financial stability. You can plan ahead.

Continuity products can be clubs, memberships, subscriptions, software and so forth. It’s a product or service that the customer subscribes to, usually on a monthly basis.

As an affiliate, you receive a percentage of the sale each month as the customer renews. As a continuity product owner, you receive payments as long as the customer stays subscribed. You receive full payments if you made the initial sale and partial payments if your affiliate made the initial sale.

Some of the best continuity programs for affiliates involve a service or subscription that is a valuable part of the customer’s business. For example, if someone is making money with their list, they’re not going to give up their autoresponder. Some marketers make ongoing 4 and 5 figure payments each month from just one of these continuity programs, such as Aweber.

Other marketers start their own continuity program and find financial security within months and sometimes even just weeks.

A huge weight is taken off your shoulders when you KNOW that next month “X” number of dollars will be coming in, even if you don’t sell anything new. And you can use that money not only to live on, but also to reinvest into your business such as advertising to drive more customers onto your lists, where you guide them into more continuity in your quest to help them and accelerate your early retirement.

What I’m about to say goes against almost every self-help book out there. It goes against what you’ve been told time and time again. It might even go against your moral code…

Then again, if you want to be rich, you might want to consider where your ‘moral code’ came from. The advice everyone loves to trot out and display to anyone who will listen is, “Do what you love, the money will follow.”

Hmmm…

What if you love writing poetry? Or gardening? Or making baskets? What if you love crochet? Or cats? Or hiking? Yes, you can make money in all of these niches.

But… how much?

Making money and getting rich are two entirely different things.

Making money is getting the bills paid and maybe being able to scrimp enough together to take an annual vacation.

Getting rich is, well, getting RICH. Whatever that means to you – a 6 figure income, 7 figures in the bank, 8 figures in investments and real estate – you decide.

But guaranteed, you’re not going to attain any of those levels of wealth if you’re focused on the crochet niche.

(Do you even know what crochet is? It’s taking a hook and some yarn and making a sweater, scarf, etc. Enjoyable and relaxing, yes. Profitable, NO.)

Okay, so if the key to getting rich is to follow the money and not the passion, what exactly does that mean? It means you go where the money is. You find something that is highly profitable and focus on making those profits.

You don’t strive to be the best blogger or the best website builder or the best social media maven. You focus solely on where the money is and you do whatever it takes to make that money. (Staying 100% legal.)

We’re talking about a mind shift here – a different way of viewing your business.

If your focus is to be the best life coach, then you are a coach. But if your focus is to have the most profitable coaching business possible, then you are an entrepreneur. And as an entrepreneur, you’re going to quickly realize you need to hire others to be the coaches while you find the clients. Then you’ll put systems in place to get the clients while you focus on scaling, and so forth.

Notice that you are not a coach, you’re an entrepreneur. You’re not working IN your business, you’re working ON your business. I know this difference might seem slight to the uninitiated. But if you look at anyone who has built a business to 7 figures or more, you will see that they set aside passions and followed the money.

They’re not experts at the products and services their business delivers. They hire or outsource experts for that. They are experts at making their businesses big and profitable. That’s entrepreneurship.

And what about those who go even further, building one successful business after another? They’re focused on something even beyond money.

Walter White, from the television show Breaking Bad, sums it up like this when talking to his partner Jessie…

“You asked me if I was in the meth business or the money business. Neither. I’m in the empire business.”

But that’s a step beyond.

For right now, if you want to become rich, focus on where the money is and how best to deliver the stellar products or services that will bring that money to you by the truckloads.

And by the way, if you’re really, really passionate about crochet, or poetry, or gardening… you can do as much of it as you want once you build your wealth building business (or empire) and then sell it for megabucks.

This is super easy and can be done by most anyone trying to get into the Internet marketing arena. In fact, I know people who make $5,000 and more (sometimes a lot more) just about every time they do this.

Your results, of course, may vary.

Here’s what you do…

Find a good WordPress plugin with PLR rights. It needs to come with a license that allows you to make any changes you want to it, along with the source code. You’ll find lots of these in PLR membership sites.

Google the plugin and find out what bugs it has (if any.) People will tend to complain on forums about plugin problems, so this should be easy to research. Make note of any bugs.

Now get creative. Look at your plugin and ask yourself what change or addition you could make that would improve the plugin. It just needs to be one thing that truly makes it your own unique plugin.

And it needs to be something buyers will appreciate having.

Once you have this, go to Upwork and get a quote for what it will cost to make the change to the plugin, as well as fix any issue it has. $300 or so is fairly typical unless there is a major issue.

If it’s not super expensive, get the work done. If it is super expensive, go get another plugin and start over.

Tell your coder to also rename the plugin to the name of your choosing.

Pay for a professional looking e-cover and register a domain name.

Write your sales copy and put your new plugin on Warrior Special Offers or JVZoo.

Plugins tend to sell really well. Gather the names of all of your buyers and let them know you’ll alert them when your next plugin comes out.

Rinse and repeat.

Yes, it really is this easy. Your first time you might have a few questions and challenges to work through. Like anything else, there is a learning curve. But this is one of the fastest ways you can start making serious money online very quickly, and if you take action now you could be pulling in your very first WordPress plugin profits within the next few weeks!

A lot of people think that to be a coach or consultant, you must have built a few million dollar businesses and have a ton of experience under your belt. Not true.

To sell coaching services, you have to be really good at ONE thing. Just one.

It’s up to you what that one thing is.

Maybe you have a unique traffic system. Or you’re really good at guest blog posting. Or you can make videos that set people’s hair on fire.

Whatever your one thing is, if you’re good at it, there are people out there that want you to show them what you know. And they don’t just want a 20 page pdf or even a set of videos.

They want one-on-one HELP.

And that’s where you come in.

True, in the beginning you might charge lower prices for your coaching.

But as soon as you can show you get results not just for yourself, but also for others, it’s time to raise your fees.

And don’t even let anyone tell you that you can’t coach. Don’t even let you tell you that.

People need your help. It’s selfish not to offer it.

It is a win/win for both you and your new clients to get them off to a fast start. Leverage your knowledge to help others, grow your business and create a new income stream through coaching.

I like to write. Heck, to be honest I LOVE to write. Yet sometimes I hate it as well – like when I HAVE to write another newsletter and I’m thinking I just don’t know what to say.

That’s why I like to find ideas that jog me into writing, and I share them with you here. Because I know if I sometimes have trouble writing, then those who aren’t that fond of putting words to paper must sometimes prefer to get a root canal than write another article or blog post. So take heart, here are 8 suggestions that should get your typing fingers flying and your blog readers happy they stopped by your site.

Be impulsive. If you write on a frequent basis, then there should be a part of your brain that’s always on the lookout for ideas, rants, complaints, laughs, etc. When inspiration strikes, WRITE. Yes, right then and there. If you can’t, then at least make lots of notes for later, and at the first available chance sit down and type it out. You can always polish it up later.

Some of my best writing has been where I feel possessed of spirit and the words simply fly into my head of their own accord. It’s almost like magic, but if I don’t immediately type them out then I lose both the spirit and the enthusiasm, and usually the post or article never does get written.

So be impulsive and write the moment the spirit strikes. You may not even know at first where it’s going, but that’s okay. Odds are you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Question everything. Question authority, rules, the way things are and the way things are done. Always be asking yourself “Why?” Why are things this way? Why do we do it this way? Is there a better way? And so forth. Even if you don’t have the answer, sometimes simply asking the questions can make for a terrific post.

Break rules. Above, we’re questioning rules, and this goes one step further. Is your blog about weight loss? We all know there’s a rule that you be kind to everyone, regardless. But sometimes people need tough love, and maybe your next post should be how grossly obese people need to sit down and write their obituaries because odds are really good that they’re not going to live all that long.

And before you send me an email telling me that I should not have said what I just did, I recently read a news story in which a doctor, a DOCTOR, told his patient to write his obituary and it was exactly what the guy needed to lose 376 pounds. So yes, sometimes it’s more than okay to break the rules.

Combine unlikely things. This is the peanut butter and chocolate trick, or the apple pie and cheese trick. Take two ideas, concepts, or whatever that normally do NOT go together, combine them and see what happens.

For example, if your website is all about how to raise money for non-profits, find out what the greediest people in the world do to acquire their fortunes, and then see how that knowledge might be appropriately used to raise funds.

Just write. I know I’ve mentioned this one before, but it’s so good I’ve got to say it again – just sit down and start writing, even if you don’t have a single solitary clue what you’re going to write about. Odds are the first few paragraphs will throw away nonsense, but soon something will emerge from your subconscious that’s been dying to get out. I’ve used this technique many times, and it seldom fails me.

Make an outline. If you’ve got your topic and you have an idea of what you’re going to say, then by all means make an outline. Once you’ve got it, just fill it in. And no, you don’t have to write it in order – pick a section of the outline, write that section, pick another section and so forth. Making the outline first is a dynamite way to then write quickly and nearly effortlessly. Plus you’ll get to see early if your idea is worth writing about or not.

Be crazy. Okay, so this crazy idea popped into your head, and you just KNOW that it’s silly, but what if? That is, what if it’s not so silly after all? We tend to dismiss our crazy ideas too quickly sometimes rather than see them through. And here’s something worth remembering – every great achievement started out as someone’s “crazy idea.” So go ahead, follow through and see what happens.

Chunk it. Write non-stop for a certain length of time, such as 20 minutes or 30 minutes, and then take a 5 minute break. Knowing that you cannot stop writing for that period of time makes you focus and get to work, and knowing you have a break coming up soon makes it all tolerable, even on days when you especially don’t feel like writing.

There you have it… 8 ways to beat writer’s/blogger’s block. Now get to writing, will ya! 🙂